The early appearance of high titers of neutralizing antibody is the major factor determining resistance/susceptibility of mice to ip-inoculated rabies virus. Cytotoxic T-cells appear to have no role in this process. 2) Rabies viruses can persist (genome or infectious virus) in mice for < 600 days after infection 3) Vaccinia recombinant viruses expressing the glycoprotein of rabies virus protect mice as well as or better than recombinant viruses expressing both the glycoprotein and nucleoprotein 4) Rabies virus genome is present in the blood of mice up to 250 days post-infection, suggesting that a viremia can occur in rabies- infected animals 5) Vaccination with plasmid DNA encoding for the glycoprotein of the CVS strain of rabies virus protects mice, dogs and nonhuman primates against lethal challenge with a non-passaged street rabies virus. Antibody generated with the DNA neutralized a global spectrum of rabies virus variants suggesting that one vaccine encoding for the G of CVS would be protective worldwide.